Aggressive Flock

[LaFleche]

What do you feed them for much needed protein?

 

[LaFleche]

This would mean the soace of less than half a sheet of paper for each bird.

 

[SamLockwood]

We started with 77 birds. We had a total of 180 sq ft between the 2 mobile chicken tractors.

We were originally not going to let them out into the fenced area but only did out of trial and error for their behavior. There is at least 200 sq ft of run around the coops. Although this did not seem to help and we have found more being picked on and/or dead.

The general rule of thumb is 4 square feet of coop & 10 square feet of run per bird.

This means you are way short on space.

I've got a permanent flock that averages 36 birds with a coop / run complex that totals 208 square feet, with a LOT of roosting bars and 7 nesting boxes (4 of which are double-sized do to a misunderstanding by the carpenter) but that area is just for them to sleep in and it's where I keep their feeders & waterers. During the day they all free range on about 5 acres of fenced-in land.

Short term you can try letting them out into the yard more, and work on having some barriers that block-line-of sight so the birds getting picked on have somewhere to flee to for a "time out." A lot of time when chickens have disagreements the winner of the confrontation wants the loser out of sight. If they can't or won't get out of sight the alpha bird interprets that as defiance and the aggression will only escalate.

Long term you either need to down-size your flock or up-size your living space for them.